Frank Shirley in Christmas Vacation - 2017 Great Villain Blogathon

As an avid fan of Christmas in general, my family always
watches Christmas Vacation on
Christmas Eve’s eve. We love the gentle comedy and everything Christmasish about it. One might think I’m a bit
cuckoo to be thinking about Christmas in April, well I think about it every
damn day of the year and I am thirty three years old.

Even if Jean Renoir’s
La règle du jeu is one of my favorite
film of all time with Taxi Driver and
The Shining, I always thought that Christmas Vacation is a movie that works
on multiple levels.

First, it is a pop culture phenomenon and it celebrates our
nostalgia of our childhood memories of the holiday. It now connects with me in
another manner since I am a father of a three year old; I idealize Clark
Griswold as the father who wants everything to be perfect but fails miserably while
being loved by his family despite his obsession of perfect reconstitution
of memories.

In the movie, the villain Frank Shirley has a small part
played by Brian Doyle-Murray, yes
the brother of the well known Bill
Murray, but this part represents a lot of things for the common man that
Clark (Chevy Chase) portrays. In the
collective mind, the representation of a boss is this grumpy cold blooded with
a gigantic office and opulent house.

He doesn’t know the names of his employees and looks like a
workaholic in his gold linen filled office. (Does it ring a bell?) He has this
attitude of treating his employees like numbers and not taking a human approach
in his relationships with his workers. If it’s been a while you’ve been working
you probably have encountered this kind of boss that even when given a gift is
not giving a turd about being polite and thankful for the good work.

One might say it is a stereotypical boss from a 1980s comedy
but it reflects a preconception that the boss represents in the society. His
decision, that makes Clark go mad, is a capitalist driven one that consisted of
cutting the Christmas bonuses. Corporations have been trying to cut everywhere
and cuts in budgets often more than not is suffered by the ‘’small people’’ as
Shirley calls them.

As of today, the mold of the boss as a villain is more or
less an antiquity. Now they plan happy hours, get to know their people, and see
their employees more like coworkers, friends, and even family.

As for the representation of the boss from the collective
mind that Frank Shirley represents I wanted to expose this villain from a
holiday classic.